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Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act denies any benefits of marriage under federal law to same sex couples. There have been several court decisions declaring DOMA unconstitutional. Leading much of the litigation has been GLAD - Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Boston based advocacy organization. Couples who might benefit from the ultimate demise of DOMA need to act in a timely manner to preserve their rights. I have written about this in the context of income taxes, but it also applies to social security benefits as outlined in this guest post from Vickie Henry of GLAD.

At the time of John Ferris’s death in 2008, he and Herb Burtis had been in a committed relationship for 60 years. Their mutual love of music brought John and Herb together as college students in 1948, and in 2004, after what Herb calls their "55-year engagement," they were legally married in their home state of Massachusetts. By then, John was physically disabled by Parkinson's disease, but Herb cared for him and reconfigured their home to keep John there as much as possible as he deteriorated.

Herb's grief at losing his spouse and soul mate of 60 years was compounded by the indignity heaped on him by the federal (DOMA), the law that prevents the federal government from recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples. Because of DOMA, Herb’s marriage to John was not a marriage for federal law purposes, even though the federal government recognizes all other state determinations of marital status for purposes of federal benefits and burdens. Thus, Herb's application for Social Security survivor benefits was flatly denied. Were it not for DOMA, Herb would have been entitled to John’s monthly Social Security benefit, which was higher than his own. The extra $700.00 a month the 83-year-old widower would have received is roughly equivalent to the monthly cost of the medications he must take to maintain his own health

To Herb, DOMA meant that the federal government respected neither his marriage nor his loving 60-year commitment to John.

Herb is a plaintiff in Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders’ (GLAD) lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA – the portion of the law that prohibits federal recognition of the marriages of same-sex couples. The U.S. Court Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in Herb’s favor back in May, and the case – or one of several similar lawsuits filed in Gill’s wake – will likely be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in its upcoming term.

In the meantime, GLAD has outlined steps that eligible couples can take to preserve their rights and possibly receive benefits retroactively when DOMA is either overturned judicially or repealed by Congress (a DOMA-repeal bill called the Respect for Marriage Act is pending in Congress, but given that House Speaker John Boehner, as a BLAG member, voted to have Congress take up the DOMA defense, that’s unlikely anytime soon).

In the context of Social Security DOMA prevents a spouse in a same-sex marriage from claiming the benefits that would otherwise be available to a spouse, including:

One of my earliest blog posts was Windfall For "Unmarried' Couples on the then rather obscure CCA 201021050, which required California registered domestic partners to split their income. In that post I introduced Robin and Terry, my mythical clients, of variable income and marital status, who were invented to get me around awkward pronoun problems when discussing same sex couples. Since then I have followed same sex tax issues pretty closely. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I do not think there is a tax blogger who covers the tax aspects of same sex marriage better than I do, with the exception of Patricia Cain, whose Same Sex Tax Law Blog covers the issues with laser like focus undistracted by anchowoman underwear, mercenaries and Olympic dancing horses. Robin and Terry were in my innaugural post on Forbes.com. I really appreciate GLAD giving me a guest post. It is one more step in fullfilling my blogging fantasy of an interview on the Ellen Degeneres show.

PS - I know that I have made a pretty arrogant claim on my coverage of this issue. If you point me to another tax blogger who has covered it better - other than Patricia Cain, whose superiority I admit - I will gladly eat humble pie in a follow up post.